


Bloom

by fangirls5ever



Category: Violet Evergarden - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Eventual Fluff, F/M, Leon and Violet are a very cute ship, Set in Canon Universe, Soulmate AU, Soulmate marks, injuries-show-up-as-marks-on-soulmates au, multi-chapter, obligatory soulmate au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2020-05-19 09:44:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19354462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirls5ever/pseuds/fangirls5ever
Summary: Everyone is born with a soulmate, platonic or romantic, and regardless of what the men say, Violet is no exception.——Leon/Violet Soulmate AU





	1. Violet, 10 Years Old

At ten years old, Violet’s only thoughts are of Major Gilbert Bougainvillea and following orders. He has yet to be shipped out to the front—his troops are still in training, hands still shaking as they level their guns at the targets, breaths still shallow and gasping when he has them run.

She stands beside him as he gives them orders, silent, arms behind her back in parade rest and posture ramrod straight. Only ten years, and yet more a soldier than any of the men will ever be. While the men rub at their cuts and bruises, and wince, murmuring apologies to friends and lovers under their breath, Violet simply dusts herself off, and drops into a fighting stance, ready to go again.

“I feel bad for whoever’s paired up with her,” one of the men murmur in the dining hall as she passes, gaze fixed on the dark, mottled bruises around her right eye. “Must be worrying, to see all the markings and not know what’s wrong.”

The one beside him scoffs, shaking his head. “Pretty sure you have to have a soul before you get a soulmate. Trust me, there’s no one out there to worry ‘bout her.”

Violet says nothing as she passes, ignoring the men’s stares as she makes her way to where Gilbert sits with two other generals, slipping in silently beside him. The three hardly note her presence, too caught up in whatever story Gilbert is telling to notice his shadow’s return.

Stabbing the vegetables on her plate mechanically, Violet lets her gaze drift to her fingers, to the thin vines and blossoming white flowers that curl there.

Soulmates are hardly a novel concept to her. Violet’s heard the men speak of them in low, fond whispers, in anguished tones, in voices loud and boisterous. For all the chatter surrounding them, the idea really is almost laughably simple: Two people are born with a connection that is unaffected by distance in which, if one gets hurt, the other receives a corresponding mark on their own body until the injury fades. The marks change from person to person—some have stars that form constellations, others swirls of red and orange like fire, and others still gentle, smooth hues like watercolors.

Everyone is born with a soulmate, platonic or romantic, and regardless of what the men say, Violet is no exception. It’s simply that her soulmate seems to be in a much safer place than she is.

Violet rubs the tip of her thumb over one of the small white blossoms, expression blank, vacant. She doesn’t care for her soulmate the way the men do—she’s never been able to muster even an ounce of affection for her supposed other half. After all, how is she to care for someone she never has and never will meet?

Who could be so important as to hope to erase Gilbert and her orders from her mind? To take precedence above everything else?

Violet’s finger stills over the mark, hand slipping away to again rest at her side. She is a soldier, first and foremost, meant to take orders and fulfill them with singleminded focus.

She hardly has time for something as trivial as the white flowers on her skin, let alone the person causing them.


	2. Leon, Age 14

At fourteen, Leon scowls at the mere mention of soulmates. In his mind, there are many things wrong with a magical system that no one truly understands. Scientists can’t even say what’s responsible for the connection in the first place (and regardless of what some of his younger coworkers have whispered, “the power of love” is never a valid answer). 

It’s stupid to think that, just because two people bear each other’s injuries on their skin, all due to some great cosmic force, they’ll automatically feel affection for each other. It tells you nothing of the person on the other side, nothing of their character, to know that they constantly scrape their left knee, or bruise their shoulder.

It’s dumb to think shared injuries can give you great knowledge of a person.

And it’s dumber still to think that his soulmate’s flower-inked wounds will do anything but make him worry.

Leon leans in closer to the mirror, pressed against the bathroom sink as he watches the lilac flowers bloom across his skin in sudden, almost violent streaks. It’s useless, he thinks, to be able to only _watch_ as your soulmate gets torn apart piece by piece. Useless that he can’t offer the slightest comfort, the slightest assurance.

This person, who’s name he doesn’t even know, is meant to be a fixed point in his universe. A constant, simply there like gravity, grounding him when everything starts to fall apart. They’re meant to be there for him, and he’s meant to be there for them, always.

(They aren’t meant to die before they can even meet, aren’t meant to leave him without even a _name_ to remember them by.)

(They just _can’t_.)

But as he watches, more and more marks mar his skin, elegant lilac blooms slashing across his skin.

And Leon—

Leon closes his eyes, bile rising at the back of his throat.

He doesn’t care yet about his soulmate. How can he? This person he’s never known. This person who paints new strokes of violet flowers across his skin every day, who’s pain he can only try to imagine.

You can’t love a person you’ve never known—only the idea of them.

And Leon has never been one to romanticize the unknown.

Drawing back from the mirror, Leon tugs his hair forward, so it falls over more of his face, hiding some of the marks that run across his cheeks. There’s no real use to the gesture. The marks show little sign of stopping, and are near impossible to hide, one scoring across the bridge of his nose even as he watches.

Leon considers himself a practical person. He doesn’t spend hours dreaming, wondering, and fantasizing about his soulmate. He knows they’re out there, and that is enough for him. He doesn’t tell himself he loves them, because he _doesn’t._ There are few things worse than empty platitudes, and Leon sees no purpose to them.

Here, with only their pain written on his skin as proof of their existence, he doesn’t love them, can’t love them.

(But maybe, someday he could.)


	3. Chapter 3

She is sixteen when she goes to the observatory.

Her metal arms ache from the cold as she enters the building, typewriter held tightly against her as the other Dolls push and jostle, eager to escape the wind and chill. She stomps the snow from her boots as she follows them to the library, where the Observatory workers already wait, whispering to each other behind cupped hands.

Violet moves to stand by Luculia, gaze fixed straight ahead. At her left side, a boy with blue-black hair flips a page in his book, attention fixed studiously on the diagrams there. Twining along his hands are soft, lilac flowers stained permanently across his fingertips. Even as Violet brushes against his shoulder, he stiffens, but doesn’t look up.

The head of the observatory stands, unfurling a long list. Names, scrawled in black ink, for which Doll shall be paired with which observatory apprentice. One by one, he calls the Dolls and workers forward, waving them away even as they make their introductions to each other.

“Luculia Marlborough and Marcim Anyette,” he calls.

Luculia gives Violet a small smile and steps forward, following after a shy-looking boy as they leave for one of the study rooms.

The blue-haired boy turns a page, muttering something low under his breath about _telescopes_ and _meteorites_ and _axial tilt_. She turns her head, ever so slightly, to glance down at his book. The charts in it are too detailed for her to understand without explanation—symbols from different languages mix with the formulas written on them, scattered across the images of stars and planets. Violet looks away, brief flash of interest fading again into something dull and flat.

The boy turns another page, sleeves falling back to show that the violet markings rise past his hands, curling along his wrists, their green-inked leaves glimmering with veins of silver.

“Violet Evergarden and Kyle Zoenig.”

Violet steps forward, gaze flicking for just a second to the blue-haired boy—feels a twinge of something as she watches him visibly tense under her attention.

But then a hand claps down on her shoulder, and the moment is broken, and it’s all Violet can do to not snap all the fingers of the person foolish enough to surprise her.

She leaves, skirts swishing, metal hands clenched again around her typewriter.

The boy raises his gaze at last as she leaves, takes in the blue of her dress, the blonde of her hair, and the faintest flash of silver at her wrists, just at the edge of her gloves. For a moment he stares. Considers. Wonders, perhaps, if fate truly is so kind.

But then the girl disappears, and his hope gutters out to smoke and ash.

The boy looks down at his book, gaze fixed to the pages until his name is called.

He does not think of the girl again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter notes to come soon :)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! <3


	4. Chapter 4

Violet is twenty, waiting at a train station with typewriter in hand, when she catches a flash of blue at the corner of her vision.

Curious, she tilts her head slightly to the side, gaze flicking over to the figure standing at the edge of the tracks. A man with dark blue hair idly flips through the pages of a book. Even with the sun bearing down on them with all of summer's heat, he's dressed in a long-sleeved gray coat, black gloves covering his hands.

Violet watches as he skims through the book—pauses, his eyes widening as he lifts it closer. Something in her almost warms at the motion, a quiet sort of magnetism holding her gaze. She shifts, moving the typewriter from one hand to the other. Once upon a time, her curiosity might have ended here, might have amounted to little more than stolen glances and a faint static crackling in her mind, her nerves, her fingertips.

But Violet is twenty. She's spent six years with the Dolls, six years relearning how to be a person. She's no longer the empty-eyed soldier from the war, no longer the child who cared only for remaining at Gilbert's side. She's not perfect—still has days when she longs for the direct simplicity of orders, the cold, numbing comfort of a mission complete, the unquestionable nature of it all.

And yet, Violet is a person in her own right. Has her own goals, simple as they may be, her own desires and emotions, though she can scarcely put them into words. And when the stranger sparks her interest, slight though it may be, Violet doesn't stifle it as she once would have.

Smoothing a hand along her skirts, she moves to stand beside them, typewriter at her side. She waits, patiently, as the man finishes the page. He reaches out to flip to the next, pausing as his fingertips brush the lavender flowers painted there.

The man looks over slowly to meet her gaze, blinking once, twice. After a slight pause, he closes the book, tucking it beneath his arm as he shifts fully to face her. "Can I help you?" he asks, tone bordering on curt.

Violet tilts her head, impassive even as the faint sense of curiosity grows only stronger. "The book you're reading," she says. "Might I see it?"

"Why?" the man asks, raising a hand to rest almost protectively against the book's spine.

Violet feels the faintest hint of a smile curve her lips. "Curiosity," she says evenly. "I'm an Auto-Memory Doll. Most of what I read is my own work."

The man arches a brow, considering. “Unless you have an interest in flower types and meanings, I’m afraid you’ll find it rather dry.”

“I’d be quite interested,” she says. Violet stifles the impulse to brush a hand against her neck, the newest site of the white, star-like flowers. “There’s a type I’ve never been able to put a name to.”

The man’s eyes spark briefly, curiosity sharp but quickly concealed. “Oh?” he asks. He grips the edge of a black glove, tugging at it slightly.

Violet tracks the motion as she answers, “My marks—they’ve always appeared as white flowers.”

The man pauses for a long moment, breath catching in his throat. “I-I see,” he manages. “I don’t suppose you’ve met your—” 

Blinking, he shakes his head slightly, biting his tongue and looking away. “Forgive me, I’ve overstepped.”

She studies him closely, feels something in her stir, and slowly unfurl, a flower turning to face the sun. “I’m not sure yet,” she says.

He winces. “Truly, I shouldn’t have asked—”

“I’m not sure yet if I’ve met my soulmate,” she corrects. 

He tugs again at his gloves, gaze flitting back to her—and at his wrist, she catches the slightest flash of lilac petals.

Violet smiles, small yet soft. “But I think, perhaps, that I have.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Violets: Truth, humility, and loyalty  
> Stephanotis: Desire to travel, and happiness in marriage
> 
> \----
> 
> The fic is finally finished! :D I'm not completely satisfied with the ending, but I'm glad to have gotten to the last chapter for it (this is the month I finish my WIPs instead of creating new ones ✨). 
> 
> I'm hoping to write another fic for this pairing soon, though it might be a little bit while I work on other stories. : )
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Every ship is required to have at least one (1) soulmate au :D 
> 
> Next chapter will be Leon’s thoughts on his soulmate, and then I’m hoping to write a third one where Leon and Violet finally meet up.
> 
> Comments and kudos are 90% of my motivation, and I always comment back on each message. Thank you so much for reading! <3


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